The presence of strong competition can be a good thing. It can actually show you that you have found a popular and profitable niche. However, it is also important that you do a thorough analysis of your competition’s websites. You may want to create a spreadsheet and log all of the competing websites you can find. You will then need figure out whether or not there is an opportunity to stand out in the crowd. Are you able to rank with your keywords? Is it possible to differentiate yourself and create a unique offer for your potential customers? Here are several signs to look for that help you to decide whether or not you can enter a niche and be successful. That is even if there may already be other sites serving that particular niche.
This twice-monthly publication is apparently full of "informative articles, a question and answer section, site updates and more." This affiliate will probably use this e-zine either as an additional place to promote affiliate products or to get his readers back to his website by providing snippets of new articles with a "read more" link. By getting readers back to his site he's able to expose them to more promotions. The term niche, when used in the science of ecological biology, is used to define an organism’s role in an ecosystem. Not only does its niche include the environment that a given organism lives in, but it also includes the organism’s “job” in that environment. A niche may also encompass what the organism eats, how it interacts with other living (biotic) elements, and also how it interacts with the nonliving (abiotic) aspects of the environment, as well.
I’ve already tried and discarded some of these on the list. Others I haven`’t heard of, so I’ll look into them. I’ve been with Amazon for about 3 years now, but am still to get a payment. I got a message from them only today saying I didn’t make enough (even with the bits and pieces that have been collecting in my account over the years) to be paid this month either…
After successfully launching their Australian affiliate program with Rakuten Marketing, Cotton ON utilized their affiliate program as a key channel for their strategy to expand to new international markets. Through the Cotton ON Australia program, publisher partnerships in the key markets of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are accessed, with a bespoke US affiliate program being managed by local US account managers.
generic keywords tend to have high search volumes, but they also tend to have high competition or low buyer intent. They're good to target as part of your overall strategy (just don't try to compete on PPC campaigns). Long-tail keywords, like "Fat loss for mothers" are generally more specific, have higher buyer intent and could be effective drivers of traffic to your site. =) They should be the primary focus for your SEO and marketing. Awesome Gravity Tip! I like the MMO niche, teaching it, creating video tutorials, etc. I am also interested in learning Mobile Marketing and doing the same with this, so what material do you suggest I sink my teeth into for this? Have "Explaindio 3" and Screencast O Matic...I generally (been neglected) try to keep my Blogger site with loads of Free Tools that work well!

With possibly the most transparent affiliate network online, we give affiliates access to stats no other program dare, including earning data, conversion stats, demographic information and seasonality trends. With ethics and consumer protection being high on the agenda, you can rest assured when working with MoreNiche you are working with an honest, trustworthy and transparent company.

This site is owned by the same owners as BabyGearLab.com so you’ll notice some similarities. It’s a really clean site that looks more like REI’s website than a review site. They generate tons of organic traffic for each review category like ski gloves combines all of their test products (amazon links), test experiences, reviews and opinions so that the review pages reach around 6,000 words. This is a great way to do a review page in my opinion to combine the word length of each review into one huge, helpful page. Plus keep in mind that people love outdoor gear. It’s insanely fun to go outdoors but you never know if you have right equipment. To figure out what’s right, these outdoor review sites help immensely!

Some bloggers are uncomfortable with the idea of including advertising on their site, especially if that advertising doesn’t bring a significant return, and affiliate marketing isn’t for them. However, even if you’re comfortable with including advertising on your site, for the vast majority of book bloggers, affiliate marketing is never going to be a large, reliable source of revenue. As in, the chances of being able to quit your day job and live off your earnings are slim to none. However, if you have the attitude that you might receive the occasional small bonus in your bank account, then go for it! Your earnings might even get you a lil’ somethin’ special next time you visit the bookshop.

Some merchants run their own (in-house) affiliate programs using dedicated software, while others use third-party intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. There are two different types of affiliate management methods used by merchants: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks. Payouts to affiliates or publishers can be made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself. Hi, Nice article. I am not sure about the process though. I can understand, finding a niche. But, when it comes to affiliate programs I get a little lost. Would I be promoting someone else's products? If so, no problem. I know I need to research high end products with gravity, are these products ones in certain stores, or companies, etc.?? If so, do I need to get permissions to be on an affiliate program with that company? Also, if it is products with a company, then how do I offer promotions on their products since they are not mine? Thank you, Nanette Vlahusich If you feel like this is not working out, this is not something you’re interested in or not something you want to be involved in, you can go back to Qauntcast, look at another site, and see what that broad niche is, and then repeat the process. You can also do the same thing at Yahoo! Answers, which is like an old-school version of Quora, but they actually have a lot of good questions that are asked there that can lead you into smaller niches. Just Google ‘Yahoo! Answers’, click on the first result. Then you want to type in the same keyword you used at Quora in Yahoo! Answers and click on Search Answers. Under the search result, you want to choose Most Answers. Of course, there’s going to be some questions in here that don’t really make sense for your niche, but there’ll be some gems in here too. For example we have this: What are your 10 must visit travel destinations around the world? That could be a blog topic right there. You could create a blog about travel destinations that you should visit before you die. You cover the most popular ones or some maybe that are great but not as well known. What was your most memorable beach or seaside vacation? You could create a blog about the greatest beach or seaside destinations in the world.

Taking the financial analysis a stage further, think about the potential profits you can make from each affiliate sale. You’ll have to sell hundreds of low priced items to make a reasonable return, and it may be better to promote premium products where one sale could generate hundreds of dollars. For example, an ebook on cat breeding tips might generate five dollars in commission for each sale. An ebook detailing a profitable gambling system might sell for ten times more and net you much higher commissions.

Number of estimated visitors: This data is just an estimate. I used the SEMRush Report and Similar Web for this stat. The estimated numbers of visitors varies A LOT. Take these numbers with a grain of salt. This post isn’t about the accuracy of the estimates or how SEMRush or Similar Web make the estimates. The estimates can give you a general idea about the scope and magnitude of the traffic, NOT the exact number.

I’m always shocked by the amount of content in each blog post on this site… No matter how many times I search the web, I find this site in my top searches with QUANTIFIABLE content. It’s valuable. Great stuff you provide. And SO MUCH. It’s one of my favorite sites to review and read, seriously. I often link back, just so I can remember where I found the information. Wonderful information to share! Thanks for being prolific. SEO is one of the viable and reliable ways to drive traffic to an affiliate website. However, marketing using SEO can be very difficult due to its competitive and technical nature. In this book, Jason McDonald covers breaks down the process of optimizing your website for the search engines in seven steps. It focuses on helping you master the fundamentals and teaches you how build a successful SEO campaign in a practical manner that anyone can understand.
I’ll talk about adding advertising to your book blog in the next post in this series (hey, there’s no reason to limit yourself to one source of income!), but, in the meantime, you may want to check out How You Can Make Money Promoting My Ebooks (and other people’s too), a post I did a couple of months ago. It talks more about Smashwords, in particular, and how to find authors offering high affiliate percentages over there.
The topic you choose must have enough depth that you can create a lot of content for it. This is important for building an authoritative site, for search engine optimization, and most importantly, for the end user. If you don't have enough content about a topic, you're not going to be taken very seriously as an authority on the topic and it's unlikely you can convince someone to make a purchase from you. Leanne, that was great stuff. I saw some interesting delineators I’d never seen before, like how many subscribers you have making a difference in whether you should start with affiliates, at what level, etc. I appreciate the “ethical” angle you weaved throughout this, too, because affiliate marketing can/does have a bad reputation due to the way it’s been abused in the past. Your article will help educate current and future affiliate marketers, much appreciated!
Product promotion — Lastly, we come to what you’re really here for: the opportunity to partner with organizations in selling their products for a portion of the profits. A lot of what we’ve mentioned previously will come into play when deciding exactly how to promote products. You should continue to consider your niche, audience, and goals when choosing how to promote products. You could take the route of being a real product user who reviews items on your site. People tend to trust individuals more than they do brands, and using your site as a sort of product review resource could appeal to the masses.
When you’re getting started as an affiliate marketer, you need to think about what kind of site will play to your strengths. If you’re a good writer then you should use that by creating articles or blog posts that your audience will enjoy reading; that’s where your site’s value will lie. If words aren’t really your thing, you can use your skills as a designer or simply work hard to find useful data from around the web and present it in a user-friendly format.
I know someone who created an Amazon affiliate site back in 2008. The site was making around $5,000/month when the owner decided to sell the site through Flippa. It was sold for $109,000 on June 2013. For some reason, the site has been down for several months now and I have no idea what the new owners are thinking. The domain was about iPhone reviews.
The other competition, the one we want low, is the competition of the top 10 sites ranking in Google for that keyword. When we say low SERP Competition, it menas we are addressing the strength of the top 10 and thats made up of a series of factors which Spencer mentioned will be addressed in detail in future posts. But to name a few: Title, backlinks to page, and number of links to the ranking page. Hope that helps 🙂

We are dedicated to providing the tools and information that are needed to become an affiliate marketer while simplifying the process and speaking in terms everyone can understand. Money is never the top priority; building relationships and trust are two of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign. Without the consumers and the companies that make these products, there would be nothing to market. Nothing to promote. Our goal is to accelerate an affiliate marketer’s success and enable them to see the positive and rewarding results that can come from a career in online marketing.